Pumpkin Soup

If you live in south east Qld you'll have noticed it's been raining a bit in the last month. A bit! My shiny new ride on has barely been touched and the grass grows and grows, time for some geese as a fall back plan I think. The problem with all this rain has been the heat that has come with it. Sticky, humid heat.

Because what I really crave in this weather is comfort food, big hearty roasts and warm soup. With the last lot of rain the temperature has plummeted to about a hot Tasmanian day, just enough for me to do pumpkin soup.

Dice a fair chunk of pumpkin into about 5 cm chunks. Cut the bottom of a whole head of garlic. Deseed a few chillies. Toss the lot in a very light coat of olive oil, salt, cayenne pepper and rosemary or thyme. Bake in an oven about 130 deg until the pumpkin is soft and a little caremelised.

Melt one of your blocks of pork trotter stock in a pan, add the pumpkin, chilli and squeezed out garlic and blend with a stem blender, slowly adding pure cream until you have the consistency that you want. Keep on low heat until hot, try not to boil.

In the roasting pan, fry off some cold smoked belly bacon finely diced, then add diced bread, fry until crisp, spoon over soup with some finely chopped chives.

If only we had a real winter.

MF from the iPhone